DiCrescenzo #1

Romancing the Doob

By the end of this article one, if not 27, of you will be downloading the Doobie Brothers. Most likely it will be "What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits," for the cloud-enshrouded double drum set depicted on the cover can pass as "Gang Gang Dance At Budo Budo Kan!" at 72 dpi on your iPod photo LCD, if you're not quite ready, socially and psychologically, to fully embrace the easy boat-shoe-and-bourbon jammin' of the Doob's in public.

In the pantheon of American rock the Doobie Brothers stand undeniably ensconced as the 11th most important "Brothers" group of all time, behind only the Everly Brothers, the Neville Brothers, the Walker Brothers, the Isley Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, the Brothers Johnson, the Palace Brothers, the Dust Brothers, the Blues Brothers, and the Smothers Brothers-- easily bettering the Blues Brothers 2000 and Pernice Brothers. Still touring strong to this day on the circuit of grilled and smoked livestock festivals, the Doobie Brothers occupy the much needed space between the less hirsute Eagles and more martini-geek Steely Dan. After passing on music criticism, I too had been relegated to critiquing the viscosity, finger-tinting, and umami of BBQ sauces at state fairs. It was a couple weeks ago at the IABBQ-endorsed North Iowa Up In Smoke BBQ Bash in Mason City, Iowa, where I fell in love all over again with the Doobs' hickory-smoked blue-eyed boogie-woogie. Team Racoon Flats' frankly mediocre pulled pork was rolling on my tongue precisely when the cool sounds of "Black Water" suddenly washed down the cries of dying swine and playing children wafting from the impromptu Abattoir 'N' Toddler Zone tent.

The Doobies had not been slated to play the NIUISBBQB, but, as is their custom, Tom, Skylark, and the boys pulled over on a whim en route to their gig at the Quick Chek Festival of Ballooning in Readington, New Jersey, mostly for the free babybacks. (By the way, nothing beats listening to the Brothers Doob from the wicker gondola of an eight carabiner attachment point, piezzo ignition balloon at 350 feet, as the Doobie sound techs lay a bed of loudspeakers pointed towards the heavens, separately creating a live mix for a ballooning audience.) I realized no band seemed more primed for critical revision than the Doobie Brothers. Here on this very website trendy hyperprog and lap-scrape bands such as Architecture in Helsinki and Mu listed Shocking Blue, Naked Eyes, 10cc, America, JJ Cale, Faster Pussycat, Hall & Oates, Minnie Ripperton, "No Woman, No Cry", Townes Van Zandt, and Mr. Mister as favorites, which if somehow all slow-cooked and wooden spoon-stirred would come out tasting like a sticky Doo-B-Q sauce. Jamie Stewart could have raked in Michael McDonald-like money selling custom "Xiubie Brother" shirts from the custom Neighborhoodie booth. Why not the Doobie Brothers?

In 1984's Romancing the Stone, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner come across a downed twin-prop drug trafficking plane while hacking their way through the Columbian jungle with a machete. The pilot's rotted skeleton leans through the broken front window still wearing his communications headphones and aviator shades-- the sort of image commonly found on the album covers and t-shirts of late-'70s California cocaine-dusted-mustache rock. Seeking shelter inside the fuselage, Douglas builds a bonfire with the lost ganja and cooks a bushmaster snake, killed while slithering over the shoulder of Turner, who, while rambling through a soliloquy of thin character development and cursory gender relations, mistakes Douglas' honed reptile attentiveness for more common male conversational attention deficit. He grabs the snake with his bare hand, saving the damsel from certain toxic death and thus proving his primal, virile trustworthiness. [See also: The campfire scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" Sue's outback bathing scene in Crocodile Dundee' et al. It was a common theme in the Reagan era.] Anyway, Douglas is drinking bourbon from the bottle, huffing THC fumes, and chewing some snake meat like a true man. And while flipping through some weathered Rolling Stone magazines found in the pilot's leather satchel, Douglas yells, "Dammit, the Doobie Brothers broke up!"

As children of the Cable Television Generation we watched the above scene unfold on Cinemax in the late 1980s, often in living rooms where cassette copies of the Doobie Brothers' 1989 album Cycles were sitting stacked by the Aiwa, promptly laughing at the reference to a band only an uncouth parrot-poacher could love, while simultaneously growing confused and asking ourselves, "Wait, when did Doobie Brothers break up?" After all, they're still touring to this day and recently replaced deceased drummer Keith Knudsen with Vertical Horizon stick-twiddler Ed Toth. [Robert Zemekis knows his Doobies. The band briefly split in 1982, locking up any possible plot-holes in Stone. He also included the Doobies on the Forrest Gump soundtrack.] Within the Doobie Brothers lies a melange of irony, ill breaks, Kevin Bacon-like links for the musically erudite, humor, vintage t-shirts, Christianity, drug use, familiarity, and genuine songcraft that begs to be name-dropped by every Devendra Banhart and Josh Davis and Jet. In a pop culture that thrives on recycling re-contextualized post-war bullshit, The Doobie Brothers are just plain due. It's about damn time the spell check on a word processor at least not underscore "Doobie" with a red line.

Kid Rock looped "China Grove" in "With a One Two" on his early Grits Sandwiches For Breakfast album. P.M. Dawn used the deeper early Doobies cut "Feelin' Down Farther" on their track "A Watcher's Point of View". Yet, the rich vein of breaks found throughout pre-Michael McDonald and post-Michael McDonald eras of the Doob catalog has never fully been tapped. In the rare case of a heavy reliance on Doobie samples, Diamond D & the Psychotic Neurotics' Stunts, Blunts & Hip-Hop has gone criminally overlooked compared to easy Steely Dan stealing hip-hop darlings like De La Soul's 3 Feet High & Rising ["FM" and Aja's "Peg" in "Eye Know"], Ice Cube's The Predator [Royal Scam's "Green Earring" in "Don't Trust 'Em"], MF Doom's Operation: Doomsday [Aja's "Black Cow" in "Gas Drawlz"]. Making this slight all the more grievous, two of Steely Dan's ex-members, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Michael McDonald, later joined the Brotherhood at the same time. To further facilitate the proliferation of all things Doobie the following is a quick top 10 of breaks begging to be sampled and spun:

If the record store clerks, music bloggers, Williamsburg file-swappers, and online critics are going to carry the Doobies back to the forefront of revisionism they're going to need meaningless trivia to drop into Doobie talk. As mentioned, both Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Michael McDonald played with Steely Dan. Skunk started out playing guitar for the Holy Modal Rouders soon after the release of their cult album The Moray Eel Eats the Holy Modal Rounders, which featured "The Bird Song" used in Easy Rider. Skunk toured with the band through 1970, opening for both the Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, before leaving the revolving door Rounders for Becker and Fagen pop project. Baxter played with the Dan through Pretzel Logic, after which he left for Doobtopia and was replaced with the bearded crooner McDonald. McDonald only lasted through Katy Lied before seeing greener pastures. McDonald replaced founding singer Tom Johnston, who temporarily left TDB due to illness. McDonald steered the good ship Doobie into smoother, bluer waters with the help and influence of friends like Kenny Loggins and Hall & Oates. Under Johnston's lead, the band bridged the American West with Southern rock like I-20. Californian Ted Templeman, who cut his teeth drumming behind Randy Newman in The Tikis and making Feelin' Groovy with Van Dyke Parks as singer for Harper's Bizarre, produced the Doobie Brothers' eponymous debut and likely influenced their cover of Newman's "The Beehive State", the third single from the album, which was made seminal by Harry Nilsson on his Nilsson Sings Newman. If this fails to impress the truly erudite, drummer Keith Knudsen began his career in the obscure psychedelic act Mendelbaum, recently reissued on the Shadoks Music label, purveyors of the Love, Peace, & Poetry series.

One of the many Doobko licensed t-shirts sold on tour in the 1980s depicted set of golf clubs, a cactus, and a large skull roasting under a pastel Arizona sky. Even those who have not chipped a Titleist into the ocular socket of a dead steer can appreciate the lifestyle projected by the Doobie Brothers. The look is tennis socks in white and blue Sebago Docksides, cutoff denim shorts, a fringed leather Native American vest with back beading, a bandana tied around the neck, sweatbands, and gold Ray Ban aviators, topped with a Breton cap. A sketch of this is undoubtedly lying somewhere in the studio of Wes Anderson's customer. Someone waiting at the Bedford Ave. L line stop wears this right now. The question is, why aren't these people going to the source and listening to Livin' on the Fault Line?

These records can all be had for loose change at yard sales. Undoubtedly My Morning Jacket picked some up before recording their new neckbearded, reggae-tinged album. The absence of Doobie Brother chitchat in music journalism is frankly conspicuous. Continuum Books can publish odes to Jethro Tull and Neutral Milk Hotel in their ongoing 33 1/3 series? Mark Kozelek can release an AC/DC covers album? Magnolia Electric Co. plays an hour tribute to Crazy Horse at Intonation Fest? Badman Records (who put out, coincidentally, both MMJ and Kozelek) has a BREAD TRIBUTE ALBUM with Erlend Øye? Don't call it a comeback.